7 ms·

Twice as High Diet-Induced Thermogenesis After Breakfast vs. Dinner

83 points by prostoalex 7y ago

ludamad 7y ago
Any layman's explanation of health implications?
- throwqwerty 7y ago
  >Extensive breakfasting should therefore be preferred over large dinner meals to prevent obesity and high blood glucose peaks even under conditions of a hypocaloric diet.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    So, breakfast like a king, dinner like a prince and supper like a peasant.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- coffeeboy27 7y ago
  I'm not a doctor but if I'm reading it correctly they did a study with 16 normal weight males and found that when eating in the morning their blood glucose and insulin concentrations[1] were lower after breakfast compared to dinner regardless of calorie consumption. So eat more in the morning and less at night. [1]https://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/diabetes/normal-regulation-blood-glucose https://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/diabetes/normal-regu...
  - mint2 7y ago
    This is a problem. No study should be male only. It creates a gender bias in scientific evidence: There are metabolic difference between males and females.
    - owl57 7y ago
      Is "normal weight" less of a problem? Do such studies usually generalize to overweight males better than to females?
      - Medicalidiot 7y ago
        The sample has serious flaws and is quite unrepresentative of the population: >We examined a group of 16 healthy young men (age 23.6 ± 2.3 years) with a normal body mass index (22.5 ± 1.1 kg/m2) Size, demographic, gender, and BMI are all seemingly within the same cohort. I have seen neurological studies with an n=8 be the predicates of clinical practice because that's what the patient population on the East coast is, but this could have been expanded. When looking at the results section, it looks like the data lines up almost inversely. Where if you have a high calorie meal in the morning you'll burn more calories throughout the day whereas eating at night you'll burn more calories at night. But they didn't measure calorie consumption from 23:00 to 7:00 so we have no idea what the measured consumption is. Maybe I'm naive, but every time I talk to one of my colleagues with a PhD in nutrition they constantly say the same recommendations: eat a diverse diet free of sugar, try to avoid salt and red meat, and get your fiber. Meal timing has been shown to be more for the mind that for your health, in that it doesn't matter when you eat, how much you eat, but you eat correctly. I'll get off my soap box now.
    - jimmaswell 7y ago
      It's a result specific to males. That's not inherently bad. Studies are easier to do with variables like that limited, and a higher sample size of clearer data can be better than 20 people broken down into 5 men, 5 women, 5 kids..
    - _nothing 7y ago
      It's not a problem, it's just incomplete. From what I've seen, most studies (especially with animals) start out with only male participants, to eliminate the effect of menstruation and the related hormones, which we've seen can be very potent. This makes it easier on the researchers trying to conduct a preliminary study. The limitations of the study just mean we can't necessarily generalize the results to both men and women, people of different weights, (nor, I suspect, people of various races,) or even, given the sample size, all men of normal weight. But first we see if we can detect an effect in "normal weight" males, and then we have doubts about its applicability in other populations we test those populations. This of course isn't the most thorough way of experimentation, but it's the biggest bang for your buck when your resources and/or available subject pool are limited.
ericmcer 7y ago
So now intermittent fasting is stupid? or we should reverse the fasting period to evenings instead of mornings?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Etheryte 7y ago
  Intermittent fasting has never been about specific times of eating. There are a number of versions, eat two days, fast for one, eat in the day, fast in the evening etc, but the idea is in the name, not the times. This research is interesting insight but it doesn't conflict with the core principle behind intermittent fasting in any way.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  Do what works for you. I get very ill by mid-morning if I skip breakfast. But I'm not especially hungry at dinner time. It's much easier for me to skip dinner.
- maerF0x0 7y ago
  You'll notice another way to interpret the results is post fasting eating induces more thermogenesis. Anecdotally, I have experienced this no matter when I break my fast, I get hot shortly afterwards. Whether it's breakfast, lunch or dinner times.
- balfirevic 7y ago
  Are you overweight? If not, why would you worry about this? If you are, you need to experiment a lot and find what works for you in any case, as your personal variables may very well overshadow any effects from this paper.
- hoka-one-one 7y ago
  Uh oh, sounds like you're getting redpilled. Please keep fasting, and buy my 1 on 1 coaching sessions.
rikelmens 7y ago
Aligns with many recent studies on better insulin sensitivity in the AM, and showing how early meals help sync internal circadian clocks (there is one central and many peripheral). "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper." P.S.: If you practice time-restricted eating (intermittent fasting), it's better to skip dinner than to skip breakfast.
- maerF0x0 7y ago
  > better insulin sensitivity in the AM I think it's more accurate to say "After a fast" . Next study needs to shift these windows by 6 hours. I suspect it will show nothing to do with circadian rhythm and everything to do with fasting/non-fasted eating.
  - garren 7y ago
    I don’t think After a Fast” is accurate in the context. ‘In the AM” is referring to the Dawn Phenomenon[0], isn’t it? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_phenomenon
  - rikelmens 7y ago
    I'm lazy to dig it up, but there was a study comparing people skipping breakfast and skipping dinner. The conclusion was the insulin sensitivity was higher from AM - to early PM (breakfast + lunch), than from early PM - evening (lunch + dinner).
- dpeck 7y ago
  | "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper." Sadly this is the exact opposite of how I prefer to eat :/ Excluding the occasional Saturday mornings when I enjoy making a big breakfast of waffles, pouched eggs, etc for family/friends. Those are great, but for the most part mornings I’m ready to get on with the day and don’t want to spend time over a stove.
  - 1_player 7y ago
wdewind 7y ago
I don't mean to be negative but this is another useless nutrition paper. It shows effects we already know about, and it doesn't show them in more convincing ways than previous studies, and it then it misinterprets the relevance of these results for a headline. You can't get anything useful if you focus the entire window on the post prandial. The body is complex and caloric balancing is not a simple thing. Studies that focus on appropriate (24 hrs+) periods of time never measure any difference. Not only that their own study showed that: > Low-calorie breakfast increased feelings of hunger (P < .001), specifically appetite for sweets (P = .007), in the course of the day. So for many people who don't eat a large breakfast your compliance is going to be impacted. Anyone familiar with nutritional science will tell you that compliance is a much bigger deal than eeking out tiny theoretical shifts in calories by shifting meal times, which even if you could prove were real would absolutely not be worth it if it broke your overall compliance. Outside of that, this isn't a novel finding. We already have small pilot studies showing this stuff that have the same problems. Repeated science is often underrated, but these results are uncontroversial, they are just over interpreted and old. > Extensive breakfasting should therefore be preferred over large dinner meals to prevent obesity and high blood glucose peaks even under conditions of a hypocaloric diet. Like, sorry, no that's absolutely not a fair conclusion of these results. It's just not.
- Medicalidiot 7y ago
  To add to your comment, they measure calorie expenditure throughout the day but seemingly stop collecting data throughout the night (23:00 to 7:00). Their conclusion that breakfast is better isn't because they compared the data from the day to night, but because they didn't have any data throughout the night. Maybe I'm stretching this, but I want more calorie expenditure while I'm sleeping and having the highest amount of somatotropin in my body so it can mobilize proteins and facilitate healing. Your compliance point is salient. I can recommend every single therapy in the book, but getting a patient to take a drug let alone at the correct time and correct dosage to maintain therapeutic index, is an art.
  - wdewind 7y ago
    Exactly, this stuff needs to be monitored either intensely for 24 hours (or maybe even longer), or periodically for longer periods of time (days, weeks, months). What they did doesn't really give us useful data other than "directionally this is an area for more investigation."
mindfulplay 7y ago
Why are nutrition and social studies considered science? They chart out a few numbers for very few people; have no understanding or analysis of the underling biological or biochemical processes. The later of which is hard, grungy and boring science - but that's really the important high order bit. This is hack territory. It's the easiest science with very low bar, but at some point we have stop this madness.
jansan 7y ago
In Germany there is an old saying that goes "Eat breakfast like an emperor, lunch like a king, and dinner like a beggar." Isn't that roughly what the paper concluded?
Leary 7y ago
So.. Don't psych yourself out if you have a high body temperature after breakfast?
gardenfelder 7y ago
There is a video here by an M.D. who sells nothing but books on nutrition and donates the profits to charity; the page includes links to all the papers he cites https://nutritionfacts.org/video/chronobiology-how-circadian-rhythms-can-control-your-health-and-weight/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/chronobiology-how-circadian...
martin_a 7y ago
Study group consisted of 16 people. Anecdotal results at best, sorry.
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  Study group consisted of 16 men and 0 women.
  - martin_a 7y ago
    Absolutely right! Also "normal-weighted" is a pretty bad standard, cause that "criteria" is easily flawed.

83 points by prostoalex 7y ago

ludamad 7y ago

Any layman's explanation of health implications?

throwqwerty 7y ago
>Extensive breakfasting should therefore be preferred over large dinner meals to prevent obesity and high blood glucose peaks even under conditions of a hypocaloric diet.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  So, breakfast like a king, dinner like a prince and supper like a peasant.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
coffeeboy27 7y ago
I'm not a doctor but if I'm reading it correctly they did a study with 16 normal weight males and found that when eating in the morning their blood glucose and insulin concentrations[1] were lower after breakfast compared to dinner regardless of calorie consumption. So eat more in the morning and less at night. [1]https://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/diabetes/normal-regulation-blood-glucose https://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/diabetes/normal-regu...
- mint2 7y ago
  This is a problem. No study should be male only. It creates a gender bias in scientific evidence: There are metabolic difference between males and females.
  - owl57 7y ago
    Is "normal weight" less of a problem? Do such studies usually generalize to overweight males better than to females?
    - Medicalidiot 7y ago
      The sample has serious flaws and is quite unrepresentative of the population: >We examined a group of 16 healthy young men (age 23.6 ± 2.3 years) with a normal body mass index (22.5 ± 1.1 kg/m2) Size, demographic, gender, and BMI are all seemingly within the same cohort. I have seen neurological studies with an n=8 be the predicates of clinical practice because that's what the patient population on the East coast is, but this could have been expanded. When looking at the results section, it looks like the data lines up almost inversely. Where if you have a high calorie meal in the morning you'll burn more calories throughout the day whereas eating at night you'll burn more calories at night. But they didn't measure calorie consumption from 23:00 to 7:00 so we have no idea what the measured consumption is. Maybe I'm naive, but every time I talk to one of my colleagues with a PhD in nutrition they constantly say the same recommendations: eat a diverse diet free of sugar, try to avoid salt and red meat, and get your fiber. Meal timing has been shown to be more for the mind that for your health, in that it doesn't matter when you eat, how much you eat, but you eat correctly. I'll get off my soap box now.
  - jimmaswell 7y ago
    It's a result specific to males. That's not inherently bad. Studies are easier to do with variables like that limited, and a higher sample size of clearer data can be better than 20 people broken down into 5 men, 5 women, 5 kids..
  - _nothing 7y ago
    It's not a problem, it's just incomplete. From what I've seen, most studies (especially with animals) start out with only male participants, to eliminate the effect of menstruation and the related hormones, which we've seen can be very potent. This makes it easier on the researchers trying to conduct a preliminary study. The limitations of the study just mean we can't necessarily generalize the results to both men and women, people of different weights, (nor, I suspect, people of various races,) or even, given the sample size, all men of normal weight. But first we see if we can detect an effect in "normal weight" males, and then we have doubts about its applicability in other populations we test those populations. This of course isn't the most thorough way of experimentation, but it's the biggest bang for your buck when your resources and/or available subject pool are limited.

ericmcer 7y ago

So now intermittent fasting is stupid? or we should reverse the fasting period to evenings instead of mornings?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Etheryte 7y ago
Intermittent fasting has never been about specific times of eating. There are a number of versions, eat two days, fast for one, eat in the day, fast in the evening etc, but the idea is in the name, not the times. This research is interesting insight but it doesn't conflict with the core principle behind intermittent fasting in any way.
rootusrootus 7y ago
Do what works for you. I get very ill by mid-morning if I skip breakfast. But I'm not especially hungry at dinner time. It's much easier for me to skip dinner.
maerF0x0 7y ago
You'll notice another way to interpret the results is post fasting eating induces more thermogenesis. Anecdotally, I have experienced this no matter when I break my fast, I get hot shortly afterwards. Whether it's breakfast, lunch or dinner times.
balfirevic 7y ago
Are you overweight? If not, why would you worry about this? If you are, you need to experiment a lot and find what works for you in any case, as your personal variables may very well overshadow any effects from this paper.
hoka-one-one 7y ago
Uh oh, sounds like you're getting redpilled. Please keep fasting, and buy my 1 on 1 coaching sessions.

rikelmens 7y ago

Aligns with many recent studies on better insulin sensitivity in the AM, and showing how early meals help sync internal circadian clocks (there is one central and many peripheral). "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper." P.S.: If you practice time-restricted eating (intermittent fasting), it's better to skip dinner than to skip breakfast.

maerF0x0 7y ago
> better insulin sensitivity in the AM I think it's more accurate to say "After a fast" . Next study needs to shift these windows by 6 hours. I suspect it will show nothing to do with circadian rhythm and everything to do with fasting/non-fasted eating.
- garren 7y ago
  I don’t think After a Fast” is accurate in the context. ‘In the AM” is referring to the Dawn Phenomenon[0], isn’t it? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_phenomenon
- rikelmens 7y ago
  I'm lazy to dig it up, but there was a study comparing people skipping breakfast and skipping dinner. The conclusion was the insulin sensitivity was higher from AM - to early PM (breakfast + lunch), than from early PM - evening (lunch + dinner).
dpeck 7y ago
| "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper." Sadly this is the exact opposite of how I prefer to eat :/ Excluding the occasional Saturday mornings when I enjoy making a big breakfast of waffles, pouched eggs, etc for family/friends. Those are great, but for the most part mornings I’m ready to get on with the day and don’t want to spend time over a stove.
- 1_player 7y ago

wdewind 7y ago

I don't mean to be negative but this is another useless nutrition paper. It shows effects we already know about, and it doesn't show them in more convincing ways than previous studies, and it then it misinterprets the relevance of these results for a headline. You can't get anything useful if you focus the entire window on the post prandial. The body is complex and caloric balancing is not a simple thing. Studies that focus on appropriate (24 hrs+) periods of time never measure any difference. Not only that their own study showed that: > Low-calorie breakfast increased feelings of hunger (P < .001), specifically appetite for sweets (P = .007), in the course of the day. So for many people who don't eat a large breakfast your compliance is going to be impacted. Anyone familiar with nutritional science will tell you that compliance is a much bigger deal than eeking out tiny theoretical shifts in calories by shifting meal times, which even if you could prove were real would absolutely not be worth it if it broke your overall compliance. Outside of that, this isn't a novel finding. We already have small pilot studies showing this stuff that have the same problems. Repeated science is often underrated, but these results are uncontroversial, they are just over interpreted and old. > Extensive breakfasting should therefore be preferred over large dinner meals to prevent obesity and high blood glucose peaks even under conditions of a hypocaloric diet. Like, sorry, no that's absolutely not a fair conclusion of these results. It's just not.

Medicalidiot 7y ago
To add to your comment, they measure calorie expenditure throughout the day but seemingly stop collecting data throughout the night (23:00 to 7:00). Their conclusion that breakfast is better isn't because they compared the data from the day to night, but because they didn't have any data throughout the night. Maybe I'm stretching this, but I want more calorie expenditure while I'm sleeping and having the highest amount of somatotropin in my body so it can mobilize proteins and facilitate healing. Your compliance point is salient. I can recommend every single therapy in the book, but getting a patient to take a drug let alone at the correct time and correct dosage to maintain therapeutic index, is an art.
- wdewind 7y ago
  Exactly, this stuff needs to be monitored either intensely for 24 hours (or maybe even longer), or periodically for longer periods of time (days, weeks, months). What they did doesn't really give us useful data other than "directionally this is an area for more investigation."

mindfulplay 7y ago

Why are nutrition and social studies considered science? They chart out a few numbers for very few people; have no understanding or analysis of the underling biological or biochemical processes. The later of which is hard, grungy and boring science - but that's really the important high order bit. This is hack territory. It's the easiest science with very low bar, but at some point we have stop this madness.

jansan 7y ago

In Germany there is an old saying that goes "Eat breakfast like an emperor, lunch like a king, and dinner like a beggar." Isn't that roughly what the paper concluded?

Leary 7y ago

So.. Don't psych yourself out if you have a high body temperature after breakfast?

gardenfelder 7y ago

There is a video here by an M.D. who sells nothing but books on nutrition and donates the profits to charity; the page includes links to all the papers he cites https://nutritionfacts.org/video/chronobiology-how-circadian-rhythms-can-control-your-health-and-weight/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/chronobiology-how-circadian...

martin_a 7y ago

Study group consisted of 16 people. Anecdotal results at best, sorry.

floatingatoll 7y ago
Study group consisted of 16 men and 0 women.
- martin_a 7y ago
  Absolutely right! Also "normal-weighted" is a pretty bad standard, cause that "criteria" is easily flawed.